Microsoft Teams aims to be one of the most effective communication platforms within the digital world. Therefore, it allows you to send chat messages to team members. Within the program, you can also delete chat messages that you send to team members. However, what if you need to recover those chat messages to reclaim some important information? Is it possible to use tools within the program to recover deleted chat messages in Microsoft Teams? This blog will cover how you can recover deleted chat messages in Microsoft Teams, have a read, and see what you can achieve.
Recovering a deleted chat message from Microsoft Teams is not as simple as going into the recycling bin and restoring a file. You need to have a retention policy set in place to recover those messages; members of the administration team can use the retention policy and the compliance manager to recover those messages. If you do not have the retention policy enabled, you will lose those Teams messages indefinitely.
- How to use eDiscovery to recover Microsoft Teams messages.
- How to set a retention policy to prevent permanent removal of Microsoft Teams messages.
Here you can learn about how to use the compliance manager to recover messages from Microsoft Teams that have been deleted and how you can set a retention policy to prevent future messages from being deleted within the program. The retention policy will not actively stop users from deleting messages; however, the retention policy will keep a record of those messages so you can use the compliance manager to then restore messages at a later date.
How to use eDiscovery to recover Microsoft Teams messages
In this section of the blog, I will show you how you can use eDiscovery to recover deleted Teams messages. For this process, you will need to have a retention policy set in place to keep hold of deleted messages from Microsoft Teams account members. To access eDiscovery, you will need to go into the compliance manager located within the admin section of Office 365. Proceed with the steps here to see how you can use eDiscovery to find and recover deleted messages from Microsoft Teams chat.
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- Firstly, sign in to Office 365.
- From there, use the launcher to access “admin.”
- Under the admin center, locate the option for “Compliance.”
- Now under “Solutions”, find the option for “eDiscovery”.
- Under the eDiscovery drop, click on “user data search.”
- Finally, use the data search to find the deleted message.
You will not have the ability to restore those messages to the original spot the message was sent. For instance, if you found the message on your retention policy within the content search, there is no option to restore it to Microsoft Teams. This method is generally used as a recovery tool so you can recover messages that have been deleted in Microsoft Teams and that are of importance. You must also keep in mind that a retention policy needs to be set for Microsoft Teams messages for you to use the content search feature within Compliance.
An in-depth guide on how to use eDiscovery to recover Microsoft Teams messages [with screenshots]
Here is an in-depth guide on using eDiscovery to recover deleted Microsoft Teams messages. If you find that certain messages have been deleted as an administrator, you can use this feature to locate the messages and see what has been deleted. If you need more visual context, this guide includes screenshots that will help you to navigate across the UI. The guide may also include an in-depth analysis of certain steps, which may be quite complicated.
- Firstly, sign in to Office 365.
- From there, use the launcher to access “admin.”
- Under the admin center, locate the option for “Compliance.”
- Now under “Solutions”, find the option for “eDiscovery”.
- Under the eDiscovery drop, click on “user data search.”
- Finally, use the data search to find the deleted message.
The method illustrated above is only used to recover important messages that have been removed from Microsoft Teams. Once the steps have been completed, you will have successfully recovered the deleted messages from Microsoft Teams. However, there isn’t an option for you to restore those messages where they were sent from; if there was a message in the retention policy that has been deleted, that message would not return to its original spot on the Microsoft Teams chat timeline. You must also keep in mind that you’ll need to set a retention policy for Microsoft Teams to chat messages to keep those messages secure to use the compliance content search feature.
How to set a retention policy to prevent permanent removal of Microsoft Teams messages
Now that we have an idea of how to recover deleted messages using the eDiscovery tool, we need to set a catalyst for the Teams messages that have been deleted to arrive in the eDiscovery section. To do this, we need to set a retention policy within the program; you can use the Compliance program to set a retention policy. The retention policy will maintain any deleted content from any source you set for any length of time you have decided to retain those messages. While initially, they may look like they have been deleted, they will be maintained as a backup within the retention policy that can be accessed from the eDiscovery section.
- To begin, open Office 365.
- From there, browse to “Admin” using the launcher.
- Click “Compliance” in the admin area.
- After that, select “Data lifecycle management.”
- Click “Retention policies” from there.
- Then select “New retention policy.
- Click “Next” after giving your policy a name and describing it.
- Select an policy type that is adaptable to your needs.
- Press “Next” after that.
- Select your policy locations and then click “Next.”
- After that, select a retention time and click “Next.”
- After that, review your policy and click “Submit.”
Creating a retention policy is as simple as using the steps above to create the policy and then simply waiting on members to delete a message. If you follow the steps illustrated above, you will have successfully created a retention policy to retain Microsoft Teams’ messages and chats. You can use the eDiscovery method illustrated at the top to locate the retained messages and access them. You may choose the retention method to retain messages, as deleted messages may be required for company security purposes.
Conclusion
Thank you for taking the time to read our content on if it’s possible to recover deleted Teams messages; our guide shows that it is possible to recover deleted messages once they have been deleted from Microsoft Teams. However, you must set a retention policy to be able to recover deleted messages, and you need to keep in mind that deleted messages will not be restored on Microsoft Teams chat. If you find that this guide does not help, you can contact our team for more information so we can guide you further.